


You Only Get What You Grieve

by lxghtwoodlxve



Category: Marvel Cinematic Universe, The Avengers (Marvel Movies), The Avengers (Marvel) - All Media Types
Genre: Angst, Cursed, Curses, Death, F/M, Fear Play, Hallucinations, Magic, One-Shot, Plot Twist, Swearing, Timey Wimey, Titanic - Freeform, Torture, Victorian, WW2, Wild West, Witch Hunting, cowboy!Steve, dark!tasha, ironic death? i guess?, like. a LOT of death, loki somehow manages to be badass, more like oh-shit, spooky shit idk, tasha is everywhere, thanos is back you shits, witch hunter!clint
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-02-14
Updated: 2018-02-14
Packaged: 2019-03-18 01:23:34
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,226
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13671333
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/lxghtwoodlxve/pseuds/lxghtwoodlxve
Summary: the only thing that's ever stopping me is me/i testify if i die in my sleep/and know that my life was just a killer dream





	You Only Get What You Grieve

**Author's Note:**

> hello  
> uhh this started out as a cowboys!avengers fic but suddenly everyone died  
> i wish you luck. it is very very dark, so please feel free to like. not read it. or quit halfway through. i won't be offended. seriously.  
> this is unbeta'd!! so any mistakes are indeed my own.  
> many thanks to the eggohunters(tm) chat for keeping me sane  
> stay safe, loves. please, stay safe.  
> thank you for reading :)  
> -t xo

He’d say that it had been a long day on the plains, but it wasn’t really going as he was hoping it would.

He was hoping that he’d get to go out for a ride, maybe to go the tavern and drown himself in beer and women – maybe finally get somewhere with the new redhead at the bar, the foreign one – but unfortunately not. He don’t get a day off, of course, being the Sheriff, after all. People calling themselves tourists pop in, not unusual. They stay at the tiny, sweaty hotel for a while to fuel up, to rest their horses, and then they leave again, an empty bar, and lonely townspeople. It was supposed to be interesting – like when the lady Wanda Mason came through, just a little bit of excitement for the locals ‘til they got on with their own damn lives.

“But no, someone’s gotta show up, crashin’ down like a damn bird with no wings and too much heat. Ruined what woulda been a-,”

“You done bellyachin’, Steve? Gotta go see what that infernal doctor’s yammerin’ on about at some point anyways.” Bucky leaned in the doorway, smirking to no end, and it made Steve snort. “You keep that noise up, you’ll sound like a corncracker soon enough, Sheriff.”

“Where’s that respect your ma beat into you, huh?” Steve grinned, his widest, shit-eating one, and the tension in the air dropped immediately. It wasn’t strange, this, trading insults back and forth, and it was a comfort – even after he lost his ma and pa and he was forced to take the Sheriff’s badge, he’d still have Bucky to tear him a new one and get his head back on his shoulders right. It was a damn chore sometimes, dragging his all-but-brother out of bed and into the real world, but it was worth it, just to have moments like this.

The moment continued, of course, all the way to the infirmary, where they found the doctor furiously trying to patch up the ‘bird-man’, as the dames he crossed on his way called the unconscious figure laid on the bed. He looked like he was from another world – maybe across the sea? – but he wasn’t moving, wasn’t speaking he barely looked like he was breathing, for Christ’s sake. Bucky was asking Dr Banner questions, one he knew were necessary, of course, but the longer he looked at this crazy-looking son of a bitch on the grey bed, he felt a familiarity there. It was unnerving him, making Steve feel like he knew this man from somewhere else, somewhere stranger. Somewhere filled with pain and suffering and somewhere he didn’t want to remember.

Bucky dragged him outta this weird haze in his mind, made him ignore the little nudge in his mind of _not right, not right_ that he couldn’t explain. It didn’t matter anyway; the man was a goner, falling from that height, and the doctor was just trying to make it better on him. Steve asked what was wrong, but the doctor couldn’t tell. That didn’t seem right, either – doc always knew, always, and if he didn’t, he’d find a way to know. Giving up didn’t feel right, but it’s what was easy, and easy was better for everyone. Nothing changed that way.

“He’s a goner,” Dr Banner repeated, adamant. “Ain’t nothin’ I can do for him, Sheriff. He ain’t awake yet, so I gotta make it easy for him to slip out. Not easy, this decision.”

“Jawin’ me to death, doc-,”

“Thanks, doctor. If you’re free before we hit the tavern, mind checkin’ out my arm? It’s twingin’ again.” Bucky smiled, thin, tight, before he nodded in relief at the doctor’s assent.

The strange flying man died before noon. No-one was there to see it, but everyone mourned him all the same, a cold shot of whiskey raised to God.

-

Wanda McDowell didn’t quite expect to be on the Titanic without her mistress, but there she was anyway.

Peter was a needy child, too intelligent for his own good, and the Missus wasn’t going to let him go to America without his governess, now, was she? The Missus’ main servant gave her a smug look, her face screwed up with pleasure and her irritating blonde hair flowing smoothly over her shoulders. They were allowed to dress down – as much as you could, working for the Missus – and while Wanda’s own air was wavy and dark, her face too angular and her eyes too severe, Sharon was the epitome of beauty – all blonde hair, perfectly curled, and her lashes long and her lips thin, and her grey dress actually brought out the blue in her eyes instead of just making them look white and ghostly. It was infuriating, and Wanda hated Sharon and her awful husband James with a passion.

She got on the boat without them; it was odd, but it was what the Missus wished, so she did it without question. Even so, she felt a chill as she put Peter in his room, dressing him up for the light supper they would receive at seven o’clock in the evening, and leading him down to where the young masters and ladies wold eat, guarded by servants and governesses of various status. It was a grander affair than she was expecting, to be sure, but she wasn’t uncomfortable – Peter ignored all the other children, lonely as always, and simply ate, asking her the odd question that appeared to him when he had the chance.

Their pattern resumed; they dressed in their nightgowns, she read him a bedtime story, and awoke to him playing with books, or spiders, or drawing in silence. He was always lonely, looking for only Wanda’s company in the absence of his Uncle’s – an inventor, and a good one, or so he’d say, with a charming wink at the young man and a tip of the hat to Wanda herself.

The tenth day, when they had really settled in, they took a walk through the ship, looking for interesting hiding spaces and short-cuts. They hadn’t heard any commotion, but as they turned the corner onto what the sailors called the ‘hull’, all they could see was the wall of water coming towards them.

They died far too slowly for it to have been called drowning. The Missus was sure of that, when she heard the news.

-

Sam knew you weren’t supposed to hate your brothers-in-arms. James, apparently, was the exception, and boy, did he look proud of it. Smirking, smoking, writing back home to the damn floozy he called a wife, it was nuts. Crazy, total madness. Yet Sam just _couldn’t fuckin’ help it._ Or at least, that’s what he told Clint, on the way to the front.

“You’d better get along with your brothers,” His ma told him, shaking her finger at him, pulling him into the tightest hug he’d ever gotten from the woman, and Gods be damned, he was trying so hard to stick by it. But Bucky’s smirk, and his laugh, and even his damn walk just infuriated him. Still, he got shit done, did his jobs, and hid in his bunk with Clint to keep warm until the next order came.

And the order would come.

The others had been warning them for a few days, you see – _we’re going over the top soon!_ – too excited, too boisterous, covering up for mortal fear with empty bravado and manly backslapping. Ready for their inevitable deaths, just so they could kill people doing the exact same thing they were trying to do. Defend their country. Their rights. Their lives. Their _freedom_.

Nuts, the lot of them.

But still, the order came. And Sam, good ol’ mama’s boy that he was, found himself making nervous small talk with Bucky, the Self-Righteous Bastard. But they were just as nervous as each other, hesitating, thinking slower, more carefully than the others. Clint stuck with them, too, as he made impossible shots and even more impossible jokes each time he hit a bulls-eye. Took another life. Made another mother cry.

Sam’s mind was battle-hazy, cloudy, and the only thing that broke him out of it was the explosion that took Bucky’s arm off. He stared at it, ripped out, root and stem, until there was just a puddle of blood on the grass and the only word that could come out of his mouth was the poor man’s name, a broken sobbing sound keening out of his mouth without his permission, leeching into the woods around them. It was a mantra of blood and horror and tears, but bullets still whipped past them, Clint still crowed his victory every time he kills another person. Rage and hatred and sympathy bubbled in his chest, oddly mirroring the blood still pumping out of Bucky’s torso, where wounds just _wouldn’t stop appearing._

He ran, ignoring Clint’s desperate cries for him to come back. He didn’t even like the man, but he ached with fear and pain that mirrored the expression in Bucky’s eyes as he died.

He was sick of feeling helpless.

-

Clint circled, like a bird of prey.

The real questions had died long ago.

This was it. Finally, the time he’d get to pick the victim, get to torture the right answers out of someone who deserved it, someone who couldn’t refuse the call of death like the others could. It was crazy, actually, how much he’d longed for this, how much he’d dreamed of this moment, with the witch on his rack and a rope in his hand. To take the right to choose away from someone who’d done the very same to him.

He circled, leering at the pale flesh, the nakedness no longer bothering him. He’d seen everything he needed, here, in this room, the first time he’d stepped in. It was worth years of bunions and warts and rashes and vomit to get to this moment.

And he’d savour it, even if he got the answers.

First, the stretching. It did almost nothing. No answers, no smile, not even a laugh.

Then, the whip. Steadily growing more and more brutal, until there was barely any skin left on the witches’ back. That got a smile.

Then, the chair. Nails and pins sticking deep into the man’s back, arms, ass, legs, blood covering the floor, and still, nothing. It’s almost as if he wasn’t there in the room, as if he’d found a place where he couldn’t feel anything.

So, Clint left him there. A day and a night, alone, in low light, with the fire in his chest raging hotter and hotter until all Clint could think about was killing the man tied in his room, if he hadn’t already. It rather spoiled dinner with the Lady Romanoff.

When he checked, he hadn’t quite killed him.

So he got the matches. Got the fire, the flames, made them burn hot enough to kill a human, never mind a Jotun, and took them in.

Emaciated.

Burning was all the demigod knew for a while. That was before.

This wasn’t burning. This was rage. This was frustration, helplessness, fear, fury, everything he knew Clint had felt. And it burned hotter and hotter until even Natasha would have cried out for mercy.

So he summoned what little strength he had, and snapped them out of it.

-

A long, sinister chuckle.

And she snapped out of the bonds.

Mind, empty. Purpose, clear. Kill the heroes. Kill the good guys. Kill morality. Kill.

It was oddly refreshing, to know her purpose so clearly. It was a wonder why she’d ever strayed.

First, Barnes and Sam. A bullet to the brain. They’d suffered before. Sam was nearly there, anyway, and Barnes was already dead. Nothing more to do for him, just being thorough.

She finished Wanda and Peter off. Monsters. Should never have allied with them in the first place.

Then Clint. He put up a fight. Useless. Should have been dead long ago. Should have killed him when she had the chance.

Steve tried. He defended Tony until his last breath, and even beyond, it took Natasha a moment to move his corpse from the billionaire’s body to double check that he was dead. He was. She shot him again anyway, just to make sure.

Banner. Hulk. They died long ago. She just had to finish the job. Quick decapitation. Nothing major.

Perhaps this was sentiment.

_Sentiment._

She shivered.

_Is this love, Agent Romanoff?_

Not right. He should be confident and cocky. Not desperate and afraid. Not struggling for his life. The reply comes out of her mouth without her bidding.

“Love is for children.”

_Tell me._

“Broken. They broke me.”

_What is it you want?_

“Not freedom. That doesn’t exist anymore.”

_You lie and kill in the service of liars and killers. You pretend to be separate, to have your own code._

“I need my life, not a code.”

_This is a child at prayer. Pathetic!_

“Who’s the mewling quim now?”

_This is my bargain-_

“Regimes fall every day.”

_Your ledger-_

“I don’t need a ledger anymore.”

_Slowly. Intimately. In every way he knows you fear._

A laugh. Quiet. Deadly.

 

Natasha awoke.

It was a gasp, not a scream, but her head split all the same.

Loki let go the second the first drop of blood hit his forehead.


End file.
